Trading time for money is something that is talked about all the time. In fact, my family and friends often ask me, Are you busy? When what they really mean to ask me is, is business going? Well, recently, I called my grandma on a Friday morning. And she asked Is everything okay? I was like, Yeah, everything is great. I just got a massage. I'm about to pick up some lunch, and then I'm gonna head home. And she was like, Are you keeping busy with work? And there was just a tinge of worry in her voice. Now when I'm asked, Are you busy? Or are you keeping busy? I just reply with businesses going great, because that's the truth. And saying that I'm busy isn't anymore. But the thing is, at least with my grandma, she's always been a hard worker. That's all she's ever known as trading her time for money. My first job actually was working with her and hosiery mill at the age of 15. I was so excited and eager to start earning money. And she wanted me to experience something like manual labor to encourage me to strive for something better than she did. And now I've created something different, something where revenue is no longer tied to how many hours that I work. And that's because I found that time doesn't scale. Everyone has 24 hours in a day, it's all the same. And we get to choose how to spend that time. But what's the point of making all that money if you don't have any time to enjoy your life. So I set out to do things differently. I set out to build a business where I truly get to work, the hours that I want to work. And I truly get to live the life that I want to live. By the end of this episode, I want you to think about your relationship with time and money differently. And I'll give you a few steps to take in order to get on a sustainable pathway for working less, and earning more. First, you need to shift your mindset, it's going to be important that you have a different relationship between time and money than you have right now. Many of my clients when they come to me have this inherent idea that they'd rather be doing something else with their time. The days that they look forward to most are those when they're not working. They have this thought that they aren't getting anything in exchange for their time except a paycheck. And even that is a maybe because some of them aren't even paying themselves consistently. Many of them are just counting down the days until they no longer have to work. And some are choosing to invest more and more of their time in an effort to save money. And some of those things sound normal or sound okay. But it's an indication to me that their relationship between their time and money isn't healthy one. Instead, what I want for you is to own that you are choosing how to spend your time. That means every day you get to enjoy your day because you are choosing how to spend it. Even when you're doing something that maybe before you didn't think that you wanted to do you're taking responsibility, you are accepting the fact that this is a choice. And that even if you don't enjoy something in the short term, that is something that's going to bring results in the long term. And so it's okay if you don't enjoy every single aspect, but you're still choosing joy, you're still enjoying the bigger picture. I also want you to think about trading value for money, not your time when you're trading value for money. And time is no longer part of the equation at all. You're trading some value, some result that you're receiving money for irregardless of how much time you spend. I want you to think about the value that you can create in your lifetime. Instead of focus Hang on the day that you never have to work again, focus on enjoying what you do and creating this value that spans well beyond when you stop working, that continues to provide value well after you spend your last minute working, well after you even spend your last minute alive, and I want you to choose to invest more of your money, to save time, to really begin to prioritize revenue and money and impact over the amount of time that you've spent, that's when you know that you're trading value for money, when what you give is far more valuable than what you could ever charge for the time that you would spend to give it. After you shift your mindset and you shift the relationship that you have between time and money, then you really need to begin to think about the value of your time, and you need to 10x that value, you're going to do that by looking at and spending your time on the things that light you up versus what drains you, that increases the value of your time for yourself. When you're doing the things that you love, you need to look at the boundaries that are there, or that are missing, that need to be implemented to ensure that your time is spent the way that you want to make sure you're spending your time intentionally. So that you can serve in a way that's going to open up more and more opportunities for yourself and for others that will help you scale. And one of the ways that I recommend doing this is calculating your hourly rate, what you'll do is you'll think about how much money you want to earn. And you can think about this, either at the business level or you individually, I like to think about it at the business level first. And so you're going to think about how much revenue you want to generate. And then I want you to think about how many hours you actually want to work. So let's say you want to make a million dollars in a year and your business, and you only want to work four days a week, you'll do the math and figure out that hourly rate. Let's say that you want to work 32 hours a week, we're going to multiply that by 52. And that comes to 1664 hours. Now we're going to divide 1 million. Because that's the amount of money that you want the business to generate by the number of hours that you want to work that 1664. And that comes to just under $601 an hour. So just for short, I'll say $600. Now, with that said, anything that you're doing in your business, if you wouldn't pay someone $600 an hour to create graphics to check customer support emails, to write content, whatever it is in your business, then you shouldn't be doing that yourself, you need to be thinking about what you can do that would earn you more than $600 an hour because you want a positive ROI on your time. And as a business owner, as the CEO, the value that you provide, is the value when you're focused on vision and strategy. So, you want to be thinking about what you personally want to do less of but you also really need to be thinking about what your business needs you to do less of, what your business needs you to systemize and automate and delegate from the day to day, so that you can move up to higher ownership levels. This is a concept that I talk about with my clients. And when I talk about ownership levels, there are four different levels, implementation, management, strategy and vision. And as the CEO, as anyone in the business for that matter. You don't want to pay $600 an hour for implementation work. You probably don't even want to pay $600 an hour for management, which is more just project management not leading an entire department but just leading and managing the day to day work. You really want to move up further and further to be focused purely on strategy and eventually maybe even just vision for the future while your team is implementing the day to day. Right now to accomplish your current goals, you want to be future focused, that's where the value that comes from your time is far greater than the cost. So anything that's implementation, you want to get off of your plate, you want to systemize, automate, delegate, and save as much time as possible. By removing those things from your plate. This will free you up to focus on that vision and strategy. And ultimately, it will free you up for those revenue drivers, not just for the short term, but long term where you're headed, what's going to drive revenue. So while your team is implementing the strategy that you've already created to hit the million dollars, you can refocus even on the next step, the 10 million. That's where most of my visionary CEOs get once they've crossed the monthly recurring revenue amount for a million dollars. And they know that that million is inevitable, they're starting to focus on 10 million, they're spending their time thinking about the 10 million. So as a recap here, if you're trading time for money, I know that that's something that a lot of people talk about. And it's easier said than done. But if you're trading your time for money still, then your revenue will be limited. And if you never want how much you earn to be tied to how often you work again, then you need to begin to think about trading value for money, not time, you need to focus on 10x things, your value. And then you need to systemize, automate and delegate all of the day to day implementation so that you can focus on the future, and what will drive results. When you do, you will be on a sustainable pathway for working less and earning more.